You’re so bad, you don’t know this post is about you

Sunday afternoon, I logged onto my not quite baby shaman. She was only a couple frames from 79 and Rev had been raving about how fast Northrend levels are now. “Run two dungeons, ding” is about how he put it.

We did a couple together – Oculus, where we got in halfway and had the rest of the party die because their dragons disappeared on them. Which takes an hour. They were a bit slow…. but said their real problem had been a healer not healing them. Oh boy. I hadn’t played Anastrophe in ages. Still, I had Vuhdo all set up so random mouse clicks would do something.

I only had to heal one trash fight and a boss, then it was dragons time. Cool! I was always good at that! I was on a green and we started and I learned that…. you can’t target the other dragons through Vuhdo any more. You used to be able to. Oops. Well, everyone else (except Rev) was bad on that pull and we wiped. Came back, I activated “friendly name plates”, and targeted them manually.

Then we ran an Utgarde Pinnacle. That was fun! Only as soon as we entered the dungeon, one of the dps turned in quests, got a “20 Dungeon Quests Completed!” achievement, and dropped group, all without saying anything. Huh…

Later I queued up solo – Rev’s hunter was 80 and I had some catching up to do! I got Halls of Lightning and this happened:

And then we were off. The tank started by heading the wrong direction around the big square: I asked what his plan was and he said “lol” and headed the other way. Hmm…. good sign. And then he pulled the boss. Fully charged up. With a full trash pack. I said some special words and healed my butt off. I yelled at him. “Don’t DO that!”

“Do what?” he asked. I explained what. He then linked every vaguely cooldown like paladin ability he had and said “lol I got it.” I asked which he’d used. He said: “All of them at once, they stack.”

Every healer who reads this is now in the corner pounding their heads on a wall. I started explaining why this is a terrible, terrible strategy and he ran…. around the square more and killed packs we don’t ever have to kill. After we’d already said “run in there and past all the little guys” because it was clear he didn’t know what he was doing. I managed to get caught up to them in time to save the dps and he got a repair bill.

We kept going. I don’t think any of them knew the place, so I tossed out little pieces of advice. The dps said things like “thanks!” and “great heals!” The tank said “lol I have three paladin tanks”. I said “I have four healers” and the dps agreed that trumped him.

We keep going, he pulls all sorts of trash he doesn’t have to, nearly dies to the lightning boss because nobody listened when I said “run away all the way to here”. And then he gets to the room of trash. You remember that room. Planetarium sort of place with way too much trash way too close with way too many stuns. He says “Pull the room?” and runs in.

We wipe. I do it in a safe spot, pop, rez, and tell them how nasty this trash is, how we need to pull one group at a time. I mark a patrolling pack. He waits til they’re walking through another group and throws his shield…

The whole room is like this, two and three packs instead of one and he can’t take it. Finally he dies and we kill the trash that killed him and the whole dead/rez/heal cycle is long enough that we can get a vote to kick out. It passes.

Whew. We get a dk who does two pulls and drops. Then another paladin who does two pulls, the second being Loken, we get our points, I complete quests, ding, and am 80. Bye Northrend! The baby shaman is ready to get wet!

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Stereotypes exists for a reason

Whew, long weekend over! I played lots of WoW. Since the two times we did leave the house for any length of time we went and spent lots of money, or planned on spending lots of money, that’s probably a good thing. (We’re thinking about buying a kayak. With peddles and a sail. It’s kind of more of a boat).

Anyway most of the weekend that I wasn’t raiding I played my little shaman, Anastrophe. Raid went great – we downed 10 bosses this weekend. Nobody new but it was a record number of kills in a single weekend. But this post is about the shaman.

Friday morning she was level 48 and hanging out in Searing Gorge. I blasted through a bunch of zones and got  her to 58 Sunday. Did a few quests in Hellfire and started queueing for dungeons. She’s got an Ele spec for questing and a Resto for dungeons. The first time I queued, I signed up for “random Classic dungeon” and got Upper Blackrock Spire; I zoned in, planning to change specs and drink, to find my party halfway through fighting the big corehound. Ooops. And Vuhdo wasn’t updating because I was in combat and I have my other raid frames disabled (yes Reversion mocked me for that but – eh) so I hit “ctrl-v” a few times until I could see friendly unit frames, found the tank, and threw heals at him. We lived, I switched specs, we killed the final boss in there and dropped group.

That was fun.

Well I kept queuing between questing and by Monday was over 60. That’s when  I started doing BC dungeons. And we all know what comes with BC dungeons… Death Knights! Woot!

They  were all worgen, and about 2/3rds of them did not suck. 50% of the tank dks did not suck. There was one I tried to kick but he dc’d first. And then there was Shaaler.

I’m level 63 ish and I queue and get Underbog. Cool. I even have the quest for here. Three dks, all from the same server, two with complimentary names. No problem. The tank is very competent and the one dk is putting out great numbers, but Shaaler is…. not so good. His damage looks terrible and then – he rolls on intellect mail. Well, he rolls greed and complains that the game won’t let him roll need.

The other two dks start explaining to him, very reasonably I thought, that he doesn’t want that, and why.

This is the start of the exchange. It goes on for some time with them explaining what stats he wants, and him insisting that it’s ok that he wants intellect.

I decide to inspect him. Sure enough…

 

Sigh.

We get to the end of the instance. Now he’s pulling out the “I just came back to the game after two years” card. I point out that DKs didn’t use intellect two years ago either, and the tank claims to have only been playing for a month and HE knows how to gear so that’s just not a valid excuse.

We finish the run, I thank everyone and drop out. About five minutes later I decide to queue again. In the meantime I’m telling Repgrind this story.

I zone in. Slave Pens, cool! I can finish the quest to find all the missing druids. And then I notice Shaaler is back again. Ugh. And then…

Maybe I was rude but – seriously he though he was going to tank? Wearing intellect gear? This I have to see.

He runs in and kills trash. He has no idea where he’s going, so we try to guide him. We head up the ramp toward the first boss. This boss is a Bog Lord dude, and just before him there’s a pair of Bog Lord trash adds. They hit fairly hard but aren’t that big a deal, really.

The first clue I have that this is going to go badly is Shaaler putting a skull on the boss. And then he runs in. Without killing the trash first. They aggro on him and kill him in about a second.

I try to run away, die. Reincarnate too early and die again.

We run back in – by “we” I mean “me and the dps”. Shaaler doesn’t see fit to release. One of the dps starts telling him just how stupid he is.  As we’re running back, I start to put a reason into the vote kick box – when he drops group.

Well that saves us the trouble. We get back and his body is still there.

We get another dk tank. This one knows what he’s doing and the instance is a breeze.

Honestly I don’t mind dks, or dk tanks, even at that level, but this guy takes the cake for me.  He spends an entire run being told he’s wearing the wrong gear, that he needs to go and read up on his class, and then – he requeues as a tank. Unbelievable.

Anastrophe is 64 now! Watch out world, she’s coming up fast!

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Resto Druids Aren’t Broken – You Are

Twice in the last week I’ve run something where I was on an alt, and there was a resto druid in the group. First was a raid night where I was healing on my paladin, and the other guild brought a resto druid. And then last night I took my Spriest to ZG and the healer was a resto druid.

Both druids complained about their mana regen and their weak heals. Both specifically said “resto druids are broken” or “resto druids need X” (bigger heals, more mana regen).

Both druids were running specs with 38 or 39 points in resto, and pvp gear.

I literally facepalmed when I saw the first druid, with 39 points in resto and two in balance. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing. So I whispered her, mentioning that 3 points in Furor really help with mana. “I don’t usually have mana issues” is what she said. Which might be true if she doesn’t raid, but she was having mana problems that night.

The healer last night had the three points in Furor and the rest in resto. I asked her; she said she pvps in the same spec so she had taken pvp talents. But she was also wearing pvp gear. Including a Boomkin tier piece. She had one T11 resto pvp and one T11 boomkin pvp piece, so she wasn’t even getting a set bonus.

Look, seriously, it’s fine to run a suboptimal spec, if you want to pvp in your same spec. It’s fine to wear unoptimized pieces.  But gosh darn it, don’t complain about the class needing something when you’re the one who is  doing it wrong.

I had mana issues. I stacked spirit, and learned to use my trinkets and Innervate right, and my mana issues went away. I had issues with my heals being ineffective, so I learned how to heal with our Cataclysm toolset. I love my druid now. I can crank out meter topping numbers without going OOM. I’m a valuable part of our healing raid team. And it wasn’t that hard! I could just have googled some spec, stuck it in without even looking at it, and been doing better than those two druids.

Resto druid healing isn’t a faceroll, but we’re in a really good position right now. Viable at tank healing, still the best at raid healing, we’re an asset to any team.

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It’s not me, it’s you. Seriously. You guys are terrible.

This weekend I played with a lot of alts. Friday and Saturday were raid nights of course; we did two hours of attempts on Al’Akir, then killed everything that wasn’t an end boss for a total of 9 bosses down. Had some trouble with Chimaeron but overall not a bad weekend. And Logarithm came back Saturday night so we had two tanks Saturday which is always a plus.

In between I assessed alts. Divergent the paladin is now raiding with the third guild raid and her healing gear is acceptable for that task. Several holes to fill but that’s how things work. She can keep tanks up. Invariant, my mage, gets to do archeology and collect pets, mostly. Her gear is barely acceptable for raiding, she can do 10k on boss fights but she needs work if I want her to be able to come in. And Elucidate the priest…. had been ignored for weeks. But since I’ve got both my other healers committed to raids, I wanted to get her tuned up for emergencies.

So I got her out and looked her over. One purple, the alchemist trinket. Two 333 blues and some low level trinkets. Ok for heroics, maybe. If I could remember how to disc priest. Then again, prices on crafted epics had to have gone down, right? I tossed 8k at her and let her go shopping.

Turns out people set the bid price of epics below what my tailor could craft them for. Elucidate bid on pants and belt, bought a pair of gloves that must be from a troll dungeon outright, and put in a request for Analogue to send her a pair of boots sometime. Then I got to work, found a few gems and stuck them in sockets, and queued up with Rev’s warrior tank.

Well…. so…. one thing I’d forgotten about disc priests is how many spells they have. As a resto druid, I use four hots, one of which is an AOE and one can only go on one person most of the time. I’ve got two direct long-cast heals and in raids I basically ignore one in favor of the other. I’ve got Swiftmend, and my two cooldowns, Tranquility and Tree of Life. That’s basically it.

The priest has a shield, a hot, three different Heals, then there’s Binding Heal, Prayer of Mending, Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova if you wanted it, Power Word: Barrier, Divine Hymn, and I realized last night I hadn’t even been using Penance. It’s like if you took every spell my druid has, added all the paladin spells, and said here, here’s your toolkit.   Honestly it’s a bit overwhelming.

I flailed along and did the best I could and then next instance I switched to shadow. Partly because I wanted to see if I liked it, partly in the hopes that we’d get a better set up healer and the runs would be faster. That kind of worked. It took me about three runs to get any good at shadow but I started putting out some numbers eventually.

Last night, Reversion was helping the other raid out with tanking so I decided to queue up. After all, it was healer call to arms. I could have queued for a troll dungeon but the priest isn’t stupid so she queued for a normal random heroic. And got Deadmines, one boss in. The rest of the group was a guild group. We took out the trash and killed the bombs boss. I noticed the fight was taking a very very long time and my mana was not happy. Then I got the “kill rats during this fight” achievement and figured ok, they were doing that, it’ll speed up now.

Not so much. Somehow I finished the fight, even with no mana, and I noticed the boomkin was doing 2k dps. Curious how that could even be I inspected him. His gear wasn’t that bad… but he had a trinket with a melee strength proc. Um… Nobody else was doing well either.

We went on and wiped on trash because their dps was so bad they couldn’t kill things. Came back. “Sorry we can’t do this, not enough gear”, the tank announced abruptly and bang, there I was back in Stormwind. Oh well. I queued again, got Throne of Tides. Again, the healer had left after a wipe to the first boss.

I came in, we started. I saw why they were wiping. Nobody interrupted stuff, nobody did anything about the adds. I made suggestions. We changed things a bit. We wiped. We lost a dps. We came back, wiped. Lost  the tank. Came back, wiped. This time I spelled out exactly what we had to do – trap the one guy, mind control one, kill the other, then kill the cc’d adds. They did what I said and the boss died. Sigh.

We then blew through the rest of the place with little issue. I didn’t get my satchel though. I guess having to requeu when people dropped broke it? Oh well.

I got out and switched to Divergent, who queued for healing a troll dungeon. She got ZG. First bad sign. The tank was a dk with funny characters. Second bad sign. He ran off and  I followed as best I could. They went clockwise; all the other times I’ve been there we’ve gone counterclockwise.

Sometime around the third wipe, second boss, I realize these guys – who have been trashing the poor performing hunter the whole time – are all from the same guild. In fact they’re from my server, from a top progression guild inasmuch as we even have those. I comment on it and they make some embarrassed remark about not really living up to their name, heh.

The run is incredibly painful because the hunter is clueless, the dps warrior stands in bad, and the tank isn’t that good. We wipe multiple times. Finally we get to the end boss. The lock and hunter have a fight about who has to do the adds.

Long story short: I give them six tries. They can’t keep adds off me or burn the chains fast enough. It’s after ten, so I drop and go to bed.

I’m not sure if it’s my bad luck or not that I got two guild groups that were totally  useless this weekend, or if it’s just a side effect of Blizz tweaking algorithms but it really screwed me over. There was no way for me to suggest replacing a weak link, no chance that they’d listen to me, and as the easily voted out fifth wheel, my choice was to shut up and keep wiping, or drop.

Guess I get spoiled by bringing my own tank most of the time.

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The Tiny Tank – Intro

Once upon a time there was a Death Knight named Interest. She was a gnome who had escaped the Lich King’s thrall and made her way to Ironforge, where she set herself up as a businesswoman. Her contacts used her as a go between, to sell off the spoils of their adventures.

Day after day she’d handle Infinite Dust, Pyrite Ore, and Netherweave bags by the dozen. Every now and then she’d send a big pile of gold off to one of her contacts. Day after day she made the circuit between the Auction House, the bank, and the mailbox, her noble Deathcharger reduced to running the fifteen steps she was too lazy to walk. It wasn’t the most thrilling life, but it was a life, so there you go.

One day, one of her best customers came to talk. Invariant was a gnome like her, but a mage, and level 85 while Interest was a mere 58. But there’d always been a kind of kinship between them. They even looked similar. Interest wondered whether they had been distantly related, back when she was alive.

“So I just dug up this thing,” Invariant said.  “I’m a mage, I don’t use two handed strength swords.”

Interest examined it. “If I could sell this, we could make a lot of money.”

“But we can’t,” Invariant pointed out. “And nobody else wants it…”

Interest thought about her other clients. Analogue couldn’t use a sword. Elucidate, another gnome friend, was a priest and this was useless to her. “What about Divergent?” She’d always admired that  big Paladin. Paladins were shiny and clean and got respect. Not like Death Knights. Nobody actually likes Death Knights.

“She hit 85 and went Holy/Prot.” Invariant shrugged. “Said no way in hell is she going Ret. She’ll dual spec Holy first.”

So what, you want me to stash this away? I’m running out of space.”

“Silly!” Invariant grinned at her. “I want you to use it.”

“I can’t even equip it, I’m not high enough.”

“Right. So you’re going to have to level up.” With that, Invariant teleported away, off to whatever adventures she had these days. (Based on what she sent Interest to sell, Interest was pretty sure she spent most of her time in the city making Netherweave Bags, and the rest digging up old Night Elf underwear. Interest wasn’t entirely sure that Invariant was… normal.)

Just then Analogue stopped by. “Hey, I got these back from Divergent now that she’s done with them, and a couple more.” She tossed Interest a bag. “I heard you’re thinking of leveling. Ditch the bank guild and we’ll hook you up with some real guild perks, too. Gotta run. Raid in five. I’m still short one healer. Too bad you’re not one.”

Interest opened the bag. Inside… well, she didn’t know how Analogue had managed to get a sword that long into the bag. It looked far too big for her, but when she pulled it out, it felt just right. The breastplate fit beautifully – odd, that, considering it still had Divergent’s name written on the tag at the collar. How exactly does a gnome fit into a Draenei’s hand me downs? The helmet and back were entirely new. Analogue must have just bought them – for me! Interest thought excitedly. Ok! I can do this!

It had been so long since anyone noticed her. So long since she was anything but another banker. She summoned her Deathcharger, Pinky, who whinnied at her in excitement. “Let’s go,” she whispered. “I’ve got to get my talents redone.” They leapt through a Deathgate.

“You must choose your path,” her trainer announced when she reached him. “You must choose….”

“I’m going to be a tank,” Interest said confidently. “I want to be the center of attention. A whirling gnome of death, bringing vengeance on my enemies while protecting my friends. Also, I hear leveling in dungeons is fast and fun and the queue’s a lot shorter for a tank.”

The trainer eyed her. “Even shorter than you,” he confirmed. “Very well then. Now, we’ve made some changes to the tank trees since you came through here…”

“I know,” Interest said, and pulled out a note. “I want…. this spec. I found it on the internet. I’ll figure out what it does later.”

“Very well. Don’t forget to read Elitist Jerks.”

Thanks for indulging me. I don’t do fanfiction (anymore) (never did any for WoW anyway) but that was a fun little bit to write. But stripped of the fiction flourishes, last weekend I did have basically this happen. Dug up the troll sword BOA epic, had nothing to do with it, decided this required me to level my bank alt. I handed the bank guild over to one of Reversion’s alts and joined Crits. Fixed her up as a tank and queued for Hellfire.

Since I blog I can’t ever do a project without thinking of the blog. I remember Pugging Pally – those were always a great read – so I decided I’ll level Interest in pugs, as a tank, and tell what stories may come.

I’m not leveling her on a set schedule, or anything, but stay tuned for her adventures!

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How To CC DESPITE the tank

So you have a tank that is trying the ‘gogogo’ thing or just plain has not asked for CC. There are more than a few ways you can use CC despite him, or try to. Here are a few. There are probably plenty of others. These tips are also useful of you have a tank that wants to CC but the DPS keeps breaking it.

Distracting Shot + Frost Trap

Distracting shot is a 6 second forced attack that hunters can use. If you tag a CC’able melee target with it and then drop a trap at your feet, you can pull that target off the tank and trap it.

Banish

Banish is a ‘lock ability that puts an elemental or demon target in a state where they can’t do anything and they can’t be hit. This is great because you can Banish targets that are in the melee and it will not break accidentally.

Deathgrip plus a friend

Deathgrip pulls a target right out of the melee pack. Then you can have a friend trap, repent, sheep, etc. Be careful though, if the target has a DOT on it then it will not stay CC’ed. And Deathgrip is also a taunt – so if the cc doesn’t go off, you will have a very angry mob up close and personal.

Mind Control

With Mind Control a priest can take over a target and use its abilities. The controlled target becomes an ‘ally’ for a short time so the CC will not be broken since the target can’t be hit.

Knockback plus something else

You can use Typhoon or Thunderstorm to knock targets way from the tank and then CC them. This is risky and disruptive but it can work.

Hex

Hex is very durable. It resists a lot of damage. It can take a few aoe hits and not break. So you could keep something, even in the melee, CCed for at least a short time.

Almost anything during ranged pulls

Many forms of CC work when the tank is pulling the group back with a ranged move. Traps, Hex, Sheep, Repent… just about everything except sap. And even sap works if you get in there fast before the pull starts and hit a target the tank is unlikely to hit with the ranged move. This is effective against DKs tanks that tend to use deathgrip for pulling (some do, but not all).

Hit one in the back while the tank is moving in

As the tank moves in for the pull, the targets aggro and move to meet him. The fight usually takes place about 2 steps in FRONT of where the first target of the pack is standing at the start of the pull. If you preselect a target that is far from where the tank will meet the first opponent, there is a very high chance you can CC it out of range of melee aoe. You can do this even as the pull is happening if you are fast. This can work with a ‘charge’ tank like a bear or warrior, and is very effective with a Pally tank. You may have to do it after a shield throw if you’re worried about the shield breaking your CC.

Hit the caster

If you have run the instance a few times you should know which targets are casters and will not move toward the tank. Many tanks that are not experienced enough to ask for CC also tend to leave a hanging caster out shooting at the party. If you know which those targets are likely to be you can CC them before they get a cast off. This is very effective with a bear tank because they lack a real ranged silence. You tank will be very thankful even if they did not mark targets properly.

Party Chat

Just offer to do it. Some tanks don’t ask for CC, not because they dislike it but just because they are being lazy or forgetful or they don’t like being demanding. Or they may be so new they don’t know what classes can do what kind of CC against which types of targets. If you offer to use CC they will often be glad to let you do it. You might have to pick and announce which targets you are CCing if the tank doesn’t. Many tanks, if you announce what you are going to CC, are happy to let you do it and try to avoid breaking it.

Keep trying

It takes time for tanks to get really good at dealing with CC pulls and just CC in general. It takes time for them to learn not to break it. It takes many tries for them to get the hang of the proper sequence of a CC pull. Keep trying. Help your tank learn. If they break it, don’t cuss them out. Remind them what target you are CCing and tell them how they can avoid breaking it. Tanks did not have to learn this stuff in the last expansion. Don’t be shocked if your tank has no idea how to work with your kind of CC. Offer to use it and help them learn how to work with it.

Or they might just be so gung-ho that they or lazy they don’t want to CC. If you keep trying they may give in and let you do it. It helps the healer and often keeps you all alive so don’t be afraid to push the issue with a reluctant tank.

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I Can’t Heal Stupid

I did a little work on leveling my paladin this weekend. She’s working through 84. Sunday she got the Twilight Highlands opened and joined a quest for Crucible of Carnage. Since she’s going to be holy at max level I’m picking up int gear as it drops. Not a fan of ret; I either have no buttons to push or too many. Ugh.

So now and then I heal an instances to work on her xp, instead of questing. Sunday it had been a while since I’d healed but I queued with some guildies and we got Stonecore. I think we had three guildies but the tank was a pugger.  I know Repgrind was along for sure.

First, the tank drops group. Ok. So we wait a bit and a minute or two later here comes another tank. He charges in. Thankfully Repgrind interrupts the guy who turns into a whirlwind because I don’t think the tank believed in interrupts. Or crowd control.

So we proceed through the dungeon. Now my standards for tanking are pretty high, because Reversion is an awesome tank, but even so this guy is not good.  He’s not terrible, he holds aggro, but that’s it. He doesn’t use CC and he doesn’t communicate with us. We kill the first few bosses and proceed to Orzuk while killing as little trash as possible – which wipes us once and nearly wipes us another time. Sigh.

And then he sets up to pull Orzuk… without killing either of the trash packs closest to him. I ask in guild if it’s for real but decide to let him try – because I want to laugh. We start. He fails about half of the time to run far enough away from the pound thing. Sigh.  And then it happens – the group we didn’t clear gets pulled, and we die.

We run back and kill that group and then Orzuk. Sigh. Why we couldn’t just do that at first…

The final fight I managed to kill a lot of the adds because I know how to make them stand in bad stuff. Not sure the tank did much of anything. Repgrind interrupted lots of Force Grips and it ended up being pretty easy to heal.

Fade to black.

Monday night Reversion was tanking for the other raid so Repgrind and I queued up together, again me on the baby holy pally and her on her warrior. This time we got Vortex Pinnacle. Once again the tank disappears almost as soon as we reach the instance – a dc this time. I was going to give him a  minute but someone started a “kick” vote immediately. Five minutes later a new tank appears and we start.

“Gogogo” says the mage. Why must it be a mage who always does this sort of thing? I love mages, I was a mage before I was a healer, but man they seem to be the worst. And I pride myself on keeping mages alive!

“Gogogo” was about all he said and he said it every few minutes. We were making good time too! Then we killed a boss and jumped platforms…. and the mage sat there on the other platform… and sat…. and sat. Finally he moves. “Back,” he says, not having said he was going afk in the first place. “Gogogo”.

We keep going. We clear the first of the groups by the lightning triangle things, you know where there’s a set of steps up after them with star balls at the top. Well we’re recovering after the fight…. and Mr. Mage says “gogogo” and runs up and starts. Well I saw a dot moving and followed, then realized it was the mage and the other three party members were still downstairs. So I stopped healing him. The rest of the party comes and starts joining in. I tell Repgrind “DPS slower!” as the mage’s health creeps down… and down…. and then he dies. Victory! We kill the stars and I rez him. He doesn’t say anything…

We finish the trash pulls, go down, kill the other stars, and are looking at the boss. Mr. Mage is still upstairs. Finally he comes down and says “Gogogo” so we pull.

I was trying so hard to see if I could get him killed that I…. let myself die. Fortunately at that point the boss was almost dead and they finished without me. I think it demonstrated pretty clearly, though, that I can’t heal stupid. Not stupid tanks, not stupid mages, and not even myself when I’m stupid.

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Bee Pit Golden Rule

Murloc Parliament is having a “Bee Pit Bingo” . For my version, I decided on the Golden Rule version – this one, you fill in everything YOU’VE ever done, to see if you deserve a trip to the bee pit.

 

By my count I can get Bingo about 97 ways.

 

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The PUG Wall?

Sorry, not much content this week. Reversion is out of town on business and I’m preparing to go out when he gets back, so not much blogging around here. Or WoW playing either: I logged on Monday but haven’t felt in the mood to play. When you always play with someone, it’s really quite boring when they’re not around.

Anyway. Last Friday night Rev and I joined a GDKP run with our pally and spare druid pair, both as healers. We didn’t have that much money but enough to make their time worthwhile. If you’ve got undergeared alts you can get some really good deals these days in GDKPs; chances are there are a lot of drops that very few people need, and we bought about seven things (mostly for Rev’s druid) at the minimum 1000 gold bid. When the party was over, we got almost all our money back; well geared, gold rich raiders along for that one trinket or token drop paid 7 or 8k for things and the pot got large.

I saw Blood Princes and the Queen for the second time and got to watch people doing things wrong on the Queen; we wiped twice and I learned some strategies. Funny how sometimes you only see how things are supposed to work when people don’t do them, or do them wrong, because then people explain WHY you were supposed to do it that way (ie, “first bite has to wait til almost the end of the time so that you don’t have to worry about the second bite going out during an air phase”)

And then on to Sindragosa, who I had not seen before. The spider trash was fun, I like waves of mobs coming at me. A lot of people in the raid hadn’t seen the fight so we got a detailed explanation, got started, and wiped. We came back, got all the way to phase two, and wiped. Came back, did better, wiped. Wiped and wiped and wiped. We were getting solidly into phase 3 and people were having trouble with frost tomb placement. Finally, we got to the last 14% – and someone dropped their ice tomb in the raid, froze us, and we wiped.

That person got kicked. I’m pretty sure he’d left a slime in melee during Putricide, and they had someone else begging to come for a chance at Sindragosa, so one more attempt – and this time everything went perfectly and she was down. It felt epic.

But that fight was hard, and really hard to communicate to a pug. I’ve never seen the LK fight but by reputation, it’s an order of magnitude harder to coordinate. Even with now a 30% buff, will a random pug be able to do it?

I don’t know, but I also still don’t think I can commit to a raid guild schedule. So I guess we’ll keep trying pugs. A ten man pug seems more doable.

And I suppose we can always come back at 85 and laugh in Arthas’s face.

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Chain Heal? Chain Lightning? Whatever, I’m the one with the totems

So my shaman is up to about 55 right now. She’s RAF-paired with a druid that Reversion is running. We spent time over the weekend tweaking hardware and right now he’s down to one computer and I’m up to two, so we’re just doing pairs and not quads (his Mac doesn’t run two copies of WoW at a time)

I wanted to get the shaman up a bit more last night so we logged on and Reversion specced feral on the druid. I bought my shaman dual spec last week and she’s got a nice resto offspec to go with her elemental main; the gear is close enough, leveling, to support both.

We queued, me as damage or heals, and got BRD. (This is after an uneventful pair of instances where Rev’s druid was boomkin; we ran into one total jerk of a hunter but otherwise boring.)

Somewhat to my surprise, it slotted me in as damage, so I switched specs, drank a bit, and started merrily dpsing. Fire nova, chain lightning, shock or reapply my shield, and back around – it was seriously fun. There was another shaman along, also elemental, and I encouraged myself to stay ahead of him on the dps meters.

We couldn’t tell if we were supposed to be doing Prison Break or the whole city, so we went and killed the boss who is for Prison Break and – nothing, so we set off further into the city. Partway through the healer says “sorry got to go” and drops. We requeue. Both of us shaman select dps or heals, and I’m selected to heal, so I switch specs. And promptly let Reversion die when things hit harder than they should. Ok, get Earth Shield up, make sure the totems stay down, and Healing Wave for the win!

We run around in the city for a while, and then the other shaman mysteriously drops group. We queue again – and this time I’m back to dps! Heh. I switch again as a wisecracking paladin joins up – he says “if you die it’s because I’m playing Bejeweled”.

Sadly no one in the group has the key to the doors in the place. Blizzard should think about either moving the key quest inside the instance or removing the need for a key entirely. No one ever seems to have the key any more.

We ended up killing everything we could, and then broke up. That was the longest stretch my shaman has done in a party and I’m starting to feel like I have the hang of it, whatever “it” is. She heals very differently from my druid or paladin, but I like her style. And the totems are cool. I’m looking forward to getting her up a bit higher.

One step closer to my four-healing-classes-at-max-level goal. Not sure I’ll be done by Cataclysm but I might… my disc priest is at 71 but stalled out.

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